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Kirby In Print Guide

This will be a quickly annotated list of Kirby items in print (plus some out of print stuff you may still be able to find).

Purchase of the books from the Amazon.com or Tales of Wonder links provided gives a percentage of the purchase price to support the Kirby Museum. Of course most of these in-print are also available from most comic shops, and any decent bookstore should be able to order an in-print book with an ISBN.

Highly Recommended Key BooksMarvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby (Vol. 1) ISBN – 0785115749 ToW link
Marvel’s major 2004 hardcover collection of Kirby’s work through the ages, 352 pages of some great work, slightly oversized (7.5×11). You can check out my quick review from when it came out. A great book for those getting into Kirby and wanting to sample a bit of almost everything from his various stints at Marvel.

Jack Kirby Reader v1 ISBN – 1566850169Jack Kirby Reader v2 ISBN – 1566850266
Greg Theakston’s Pure Imaginations published these two volumes in 2003 and 2004, each with 160 pages of some of the best public domain Kirby work from the 1940s and 1950s. You can read my initial thoughts on v2 over here. Highly recommended to the more experienced Kirby fan looking for samples of his non-superhero work, with a good sampling of crime and romance. Unfortunately not available through most on-line sellers, you can order them from Last Gasp or from Midnight Enterprises. Most of PI’s COMPLETE KIRBY seem to be out of print, though Last Gasp appears to have one of the hardcovers right now, and Bud Plant and others have the recent THE COMIC STRIP JACK KIRBY.

Fantastic Four Omnibus ISBN – 0785118705 ToW link
Marvel’s latest reprint format, this slightly oversized (7.5×11) massive hardcover reprints FF #1 – #30 and Annual #1 with all the original letter columns and some other features in one fat 848 page book. If you don’t otherwise have this material in a permanent format and really want the colour, this is a reasonable way to get it in one shot.

The Comics Journal Library: Jack Kirby ISBN – 1560974346 ToW link
A collection of various Kirby related interviews and articles which appeared in THE COMICS JOURNAL over the years, including his long and controversial late 1980s interview. While a bit of a flawed book in a lot of ways (with an over-emphasis on his disagreements with Marvel over art returns, and a generally weak selection of articles) it gives a good overview of Kirby’s career and contains a wealth of great artwork (in particular a few colour reproductions of Kirby’s letters home from the war).

TwoMorrowsThe Jack Kirby Collector
TwoMorrows’ magazine devoted to Kirby is still going strong after over a decade, starting as a small 16-page magazine with black and white covers, getting colour covers with #8 and moving to tabloid size with #31, that format continuing to today, and they’ve probably done more than anyone else in keeping Kirby’s name and art in the spotlight. The early issues are sold out, but reprinted in the collections listed below. Most of the others are available for ordering at the above site, as are subscriptions and the books listed below. Their other fanzines (ALTER EGO, COMIC BOOK ARTIST v1, BACK ISSUE) also frequently had Kirby related content.

Kirby Unleashed
This tabloid sized 2004 re-issue of the early 1970s portfolio (with a lot of additional and updated material) is beautiful and a bargain at the price they’re asking for it.

Kirby Checklist
A massive undertaking from 1998, indexing nearly all of Kirby’s work, an essential guide for Kirby fans, and with a lot of great spot illustrations.

Captain Victory Graphite Edition
Reprinted from copies of the pencils, this is the original 1970s CAPTAIN VICTORY graphic novel that was modified to form the first few issues of the on-going series.

Silver Star Graphite Edition ISBN – 1893905551 ToW link
Reprinting the complete six issue mini-series from the 1980s, direct from copies of Kirby’s pencils where available, plus Kirby’s screenplay treatment for a film version of the story and other artwork in a 160-page book.

Streetwise ISBN – 1893905047
Reprints the great Kirby autobiographical short story “Street Code“, which also serves as the springboard for other cartoonists doing autobio shorts.

Fourth World in b&w
DC’s current version of the Fourth World books collects the contents of the three main books in four tradepaperbacks. These books are black and white with greytones added, which got a mixed at best reaction from most fans. I thought they were okay but could have been better. They’re still a very affordable way to get some great comics. Note that DC has announced plans to reprint the material in colour hardcovers, in chronological order and including the unreprinted 1980s stuff, beginning in 2007.Jack Kirby’s New Gods ISBN – 1563893851Jack Kirby’s Forever People ISBN – 1563895102 ToW linkJack Kirby’s Mister Miracle ISBN – 1563894572 ToW linkJack Kirby’s Fourth World (MM v2) ISBN – 1563897237 ToW link

1970s Kirby in Colour
The last few years have seen a decent number of quality releases of Kirby’s 70s work in paperback from both DC and Marvel in full colour standard comic size (6.5×10).

Marvel Essentials“Essentials” are Marvel’s name for their thick black and white tradepaperbacks (originally about 500 pages each, new editions routinely over 600) collecting large runs of various books/characters from the beginning. These are regular comic sized (6.5×10) books. The reproduction quality varies. Generally sharp, but then sometimes for anywhere from a page to a whole story you’ll get something that looks like a photocopy of a printed comic. Anyway, they’re the most affordable way to read most of Kirby’s 1960s material. The books tend to fall out of print for long periods sometimes, but most are currently available.These volumes have substantial (sometimes all) Kirby art.

Of related interestMaximum Fantastic Four ISBN – 078511792X ToW link
Coffeetable book which reprints FF #1, blowing up each panel to full or double page size, and including some extras. Got mixed reviews.

DC Archives
DC’s Archives series are colour hardcover books, similar in format to the Masterworks.

Fantastic Firsts ISBN – 0785108238
A thick tradepaperback collecting various first appearances, about half of this book is by Jack Kirby. Mostly familiar standards, but notable as (at the time) the only modern reprints of the first issue of SGT. FURY and the first SHIELD story from STRANGE TALES #135.

Marvel Visionaries – Gil Kane ISBN – 0785108882 ToW link
Includes Gil Kane’s first work at Marvel, a Hulk story from TALES TO ASTONISH #76 where he worked over Kirby layouts. No other Kirby, but hey, over 200 pages of Gil Kane.

Other PublishersAdventures of the Fly v1 ISBN – 1879794187 ToW link
Reprints the first four issues of the 1959 Archie series, with most of the Kirby work in those issues and the Fly teaser from DOUBLE LIFE OF PRIVATE STRONG #1. My post on it is here.

Modern Arf ISBN – 1560976292 ToW link
The first of Craig Yoe’s anthologies of modern art themes in the comics features Kirby’s 1950s story “The Fourth Dimension is a Many Splattered Thing”, reprinted from the original art, in crisp clean black-and-white, among other things.

Biographical

The Comic Book Makers (Joe Simon autobio) ISBN – 1887591354
Written with his son Jim Simon, this is a great collection of reflections on Simon’s long career in comics and the many people he knew. As you’d expect, the bulk of the book is about work done with Jack Kirby over their decades of partnership, with a lot of artwork and related material printed, some of it previously unpublished, including an unpublished Boy Explorers story, unused Stuntman double page splashes and a reprint from BLACK MAGIC. The first edition was published in 1990 by Crestwood II, the link is the revised edition published in 2003 by Vanguard.

Will Eisner’s Shop Talk ISBN – 156971536X ToW link
A collection of Will Eisner’s discussions with fellow creators, mostly reprinted from his WILL EISNER QUARTERLY or SPIRIT MAGAZINE, including Jack Kirby and Joe Simon in seperate interviews from the early 1980s.

Masters of American Comics ISBN – 030011317X
The catalog of the MOCA art exhibition that opened in LA and will be going on tour, Kirby is one of fifteen artists given the spotlight in the show, and this book has some of the artwork shown and some biographical material and critical appraisals.